1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to computers, and more particularly to a method, system, and computer program product for validating data exchanges between an initiator and a receiver in a fibre channel protocol (FCP).
2. Description of Related Art
Fibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited standards committee. Use of fibre channel began primarily in the supercomputer field. However, fibre channel has become the standard connection type for storage area networks (SANs) in enterprise storage systems. Despite common connotations of its name, fibre channel signaling may operate over both twisted pair copper wire and fiber optic cables.
Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) is a transport protocol, similar to Transport Control Protocol (TCP) used in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. FCP predominantly transports Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) commands over fibre channel networks. During FCP operations where data is exchanged between an initiator and a receiver, such as a write operation, conditions may occur that cause this data to be associated with an incorrect write command received either prior or subsequent to, the correct write command. These conditions may lead to data integrity errors.
A known solution to these conditions has been to implement a long timeout value as dictated by the Fibre Channel standards described above. Following the timeout, an explicit logout with the receiver is performed if the exchange is not properly aborted. This solution, along with additional known solutions, may tie up computing resources (such as during the timeout period), add complexity, or present incompatibilities in the system.